New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, center right, addresses a gathering at a town hall meeting Wednesday in Long Hill, N.J.

Associated Press

LONG HILL, N.J.—In his first day of taking his budget message directly to voters, Gov. Chris Christie called for the reigning in of benefits for public workers and touted his administration’s work in reducing the number of public employees.

During a town hall meeting here in this Morris County Wednesday morning, Mr. Christie returned to a theme of his budget address: that 94% of new proposed spending went to pensions, health benefits and debt service costs, while 6% was devoted to programs.

“If we don’t get this monkey off our backs of pensions, health benefits and debt services, we will never be able to grow as a state,” Mr. Christie said in his opening remarks. “I’m calling this stuff out and we are going to try to fix it.”

On Tuesday, the Republican governor unveiled a $34.4 billion budget, the largest in state history that includes the biggest pension payment ever, according to his administration. The fiscal plan is a 4% increase from the current budget of $33 billion.

Mr. Christie returned repeatedly to the need to address benefits to public workers during his 33-minute speech, though he didn’t detail how he intended to.

Democrats pushed back on any effort to scale back benefits to public workers, arguing that employees agreed to put more into their pensions and health benefits during 2011 reforms.

The $2.25 billion pension payment represents a full allotment obligated under a state law that required increasing contributions to retirement benefits over a seven year period. It still falls below the $4 billion recommended by state actuaries to fully fund benefits for public workers.

Even with the increasing pension payments, the state’s retirement plan for workers is still underfunded by $52 billion because of years of not making full payments, according to the Christie administration.

“Does anyone think we can have a $52 billion problem and do nothing?” Mr. Christie said during the town hall, in a swipe against Democrats. “Not even Mark Zuckerberg could bail us out of this problem.”

Democrats said Tuesday that Mr. Christie should improve the economy instead of chipping away at worker benefits.

The event was Mr. Christies 111th town hall, a signature part of his administration’s efforts to take its agenda directly to voters. Mr. Christie is from Morris County, a solidly Republican area of the state about an hour west of New York City.

The event was filled to capacity with roughly 525 people, according to Mr. Christie’s aides.